Ranking CUSA bowl games by importance

[jdennis82]

Curious how you guys would rank the CUSA bowl match-ups in terms of importance to league perception.

Obviously, the games against AQ schools and those involving our championship game competitors would lead the way, but from there?

Here's how I see it:

#1 Dec. 31 - Mississippi State vs. Rice - AutoZone Liberty Bowl

- CUSA champ vs SEC...no brainer #1

#2 Dec. 27 - Maryland 20, vs. Marshall 31 - Military Bowl

- CUSA runner up vs ACC...big win in the books!

#3 Dec. 30 - Navy vs. Middle Tennessee - Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl

- CUSA vs Military Academy...will garner more national attention than the rest

#4 Jan. 1 - UNLV vs. North Texas - Heart of Dallas Bowl

- CUSA vs MWC...hugely important for both schools, but will be largely lost nationally

#5 Dec. 21 - Louisiana-Lafayette 24, Tulane 21 - R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl

- CUSA vs Sunbelt...would've slotted this one spot higher because it would've been nice for the new conference to have scoreboard over our former league but Tulane is on the way out

#6 Dec. 23 - East Carolina 37, Ohio 20 - Beef 'O' Brady's Bowl

- CUSA vs MAC...seemed like it may've been more important a month ago but the MAC spit the bit this bowl season & ECU is on the way out

[Christopher Walker]

Marshall's win isn't just over the ACC, but a future B1G member as well.

[GOMG2013]

Navy will get mtsu some exposure, especially being the first game on Monday. Navy is also 8-4. Good team.

We also have an important game considering unlv was a decent MWC team this year. CUSA will be compared to the other mid major conferences, and we need to make sure we beat a MWC team head to head.

[PlummMeanGreen]

According to most of the personalities on KTCK 1310 "The Ticket" all bowl games except the BCS bowls are spares.

Bowl games are mostly exhibitions mean't for the schools, their football teams and their fans. If a bowl win over a school helps said school get inside a Top 25 poll then it becomes much more important.

With the Lone Star State having almost 30,000,000 population and our's the only bowl game on New Years Day with a Texas-based team I like our chances to do well viewership-wise and that's where we need to do well............Texas. How many really give a damn what viewership we get in Rhode Island or its neighboring blue (and flat out damn broke) states?

Some very, very interesting Texas population demographics in the below link:

http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/chs/popdat/ST2013.shtm

Edited December 28, 2013 by PlummMeanGreen

[JesseMartin]

Back to the OP, I think that order sounds about right.